Flora offers a green way to stay off your phone, clear to-do lists, and build life-changing habits. Flora blocks distracting apps in a pleasant way to help you focus on what’s important. Plant a seed in Flora, and as you progress towards your goals, the seed will grow into a healthy tree. If you leave Flora for social media or games while growing a tree, the tree dies! If you don’t, you’ll unlock new trees. Create a to-do item and set a reminder; tag your trees with a to-do item to track the progress. Grow trees regularly to earn a beautiful garden, with each tree a record of your hard work. Daily, weekly or monthly statistics help you improve your time-management skills. Challenge friends to plant trees together; if you successfully stay away from your phones together, each of you will win an additional tree. You can also chat and share your progress with each other. Flora’s opt-in Price and Care service lets you plant real trees if you kill or successfully grow a tree in the app.

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D2C startup, BECO, develops and manufactures 100% natural and plastic-free consumer goods in the kitchen, home, and personal care space. Founded by Aditya Ruia, Anuj Ruia and Akshay Varma, BECO makes a sustainable lifestyle easily accessible to all Indians. It provides affordable and eco-friendly alternatives to single-use products such as napkins, toilet paper, tissue rolls and more. BECO recently launched its first-ever 94% plastic-free and 100% recyclable tetra-pak packaging for cleaning solutions.

In this exclusive interview, BECO’s co-founder, Aditya Ruia, talks to NEHA KIRPAL about their process, products, and plans for the future.

Tell us how you develop and manufacture natural and plastic-free consumer goods.
AR: As a sustainable brand, we want consumers to slowly eliminate non-biodegradable items from their homes. Our products, like tissue rolls, kitchen towels, and other normally plastic goods such as toothbrushes are made from bamboo. Bamboo is a strong, durable fibre that is a better alternative to trees that are felled for paper. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. We source the raw material from North East India.

In terms of kitchen and personal cleaning solutions, we identify non-toxic chemicals. This ensures that all our products are biodegradable and compostable. The biggest benefit of using non-toxic chemicals in cleaning products is that they prevent health issues for those handling them.

Tell us about your affordable and eco-friendly alternatives.
AR: Single-use plastic is one of the largest reasons for environmental degradation. The genesis of BECO goes back to a time when the three of us were part of a beach clean-up drive in Mumbai. We discovered a plastic wrapper, which belonged to a chocolate whose circulation was discontinued back in the 1990s. We wanted to address the pain point afflicting Indian consumers: lack of awareness and availability as well as the ill-affordable options. Starting BECO was our response to this gap.

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Greetings, eco-champions! I’m Agastya Karan Seth, a 16-year-old Grade XI student at The Shri Ram School, Moulsari, Gurugram, on a mission to combat the deceptive menace of greenwashing through my initiative GreenWatchers: Gaming for Transparent Sustainability. Let’s dive into the world of greenwashing, understand its impact, and explore how we can collectively drive positive change.

Greenwashing: The Wolf in Eco-Friendly Clothing

Picture this: Companies dressing up in eco-friendly attire while hiding harmful practices underneath. This is the art of greenwashing — a tactic that misleads well-intentioned consumers into supporting businesses that don’t truly contribute to sustainability. They do this by not disclosing the impact of their operations on the environment, a practice sometimes called “green-hushing”, or by making false, vague, exaggerated claims or by using deceptive images and symbols that make us believe we are supporting sustainable industries. The consequences are severe, as our choices shift support away from genuine eco-efforts and unintentionally contribute to the problem. This is where awareness becomes paramount.

Journey Towards Sustainability One Conscious Decision at a Time

GreenWatchers.in is a web-based tool for revolutionizing our understanding of, and hence our approach towards, sustainability. It features a game where players navigate a sustainable world, confronting challenges, collecting points, and, most importantly, exposing false sustainability claims. The eco-conscious journey equips you with an electric vehicle to navigate through your path to sustainability.

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Ganesh Chaturthi is an amazing festival that brings immense emotion and devotion for devotees of Lord Ganesh. The selection of the idol starts almost three months in advance. Devotees’ homes are cleaned before Lord Ganesh’s arrival. Family and friends are invited over and treated to delicious food and prasad after taking His blessings. I fondly remember the pedas and white sugar flower balls we would receive after a darshan of our neighbours’ Ganapati when we were small.

There are many ways we can welcome Lord Ganesh into our homes in a more sustainable way. Thus we respect His mother as well. I always ask devotees: who do they think Lord Ganesh will bless more — someone who respects His mother or someone who abuses her?

Almost 3,00,000 devotees in Mumbai bring Lord Ganesh home and many of them still go for Plaster of Paris (POP) idols. The harmful effects caused by the immersion of POP idols at the end of the festival are unimaginable.

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Store carbon dioxide underwater

What if we could suck up carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and store them in large flexible polymer bags deep under the sea instead of releasing it into the air? As stunning as it sounds, scientists argue that the idea isn’t crazy. Pipes will feed the gas into these bags and they will remain for thousands of years undisturbed. Or at least, that’s what we hope (and also pray that sharks don’t sink their teeth into them!).

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Among the numerous days celebrated the world over, the one that profoundly impacts the present as well as future generations is World Bicycle Day. Well, on 3 June every year, since 2018, the U.N. General Assembly dedicated this day to celebrate the joy of riding bicycles. The simple structure of a bicycle requires only air and a bit of energy to function, however, it has proved itself to be both environmentally-friendly and a friend to all mankind. Prof Leszek Sibilski, a Polish-American sociologist, along with his sociology students, was the inspirer of this cause.

Apart from being an eco-friendly and economic means of transport, bicycling also promotes good physical as well as mental health. Cycling decreases the possibility of falling prey to cardiovascular diseases, aids in building body muscle, and reduces overall fat. It strengthens bones, improves joint mobility and relieves stress. In addition, it also facilitates the regulation and maintenance of healthy blood sugar levels in our system. Thus, cycling reduces the risk of depression, obesity, arthritis, diabetes, certain cancers, strokes and heart attacks.

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One fine sunny morning hundreds of school students turned up at the historic Gandhi Maidan in the heart of Bihar’s capital city, Patna. They removed all the hoardings that were fixed onto the trees. Then they pulled out the 5-6 inch deep nails that had been hammered into the 200 odd trees. The next morning, all the local newspapers carried the story on the first page with photos of the same.

These students call themselves the Tarumitras, i.e., the ‘Friends of Trees’, in Hindi and Sanskrit. To protect and promote a healthy environment, Jesuit priest, Fr Robert Athickal, started the student movement at Patna’s St Xavier’s School in 1988. Students from nearby schools were roped in to join the movement under the leadership of ninth grader, Anindo Banerjee, of Loyola High School, Patna.

Today, the movement has nearly 2,00,000 school and college students in more than 1,000 high schools and colleges in many parts of India.

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Earth Day (April 22) is the perfect time to reflect about what you are doing to help protect the environment. This year’s theme is ‘Invest in our Planet. What will you do?’ There are so many ways in which we can make a difference. Find the true meaning of the day by capturing its spirit and making it a part of your life long after you’ve turned April’s page on the calendar.

Begin the day by challenging your family members to take the fastest shower or use the least amount of bath water to get clean! Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. Track the water you use in a given day and think about how you can improve on it.

Make an eco-statement with your clothes on Earth Day. Wear outfits in green, brown or blue colours to show your support for Mother Earth. Flaunt a T-shirt or bag with messages like “Plant a Tree”, “Save Earth”, etc., or animal prints like zebra and leopard prints, or flower and butterfly wing designs.

Organize a recycling drive in your neighbourhood. Collect paper, plastic, glass and e-waste for recycling.

Do your friends have books and board games that are no longer being used? Organize a swap party — a great way to get “new” games and books without new products being manufactured.

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The fashion industry, which is worth $1.5 trillion globally and employs more than 300 million people along the value chain, is a significant contributor to textile waste and carbon emissions. It is also responsible for as much as 10% of global pollution, making it the second-most polluting industry after aviation. Therefore, being eco-friendly or environment-friendly has become very important in the field of fashion. An estimated 80 billion pieces of clothing are consumed every year. Considering this insatiable demand for new clothes, we as consumers need to look at more than just a price tag on our next shopping spree. By seeking information about who made your clothes, the working conditions in which they were crafted, the materials they are made up of and the effect of entire supply chain on nature, we can begin making the choices that are easier for the future of the planet.

When we see the definition of the word eco-friendly in terms of fabric, it is evident that natural fabrics like cotton, hemp (made from plants) or Tencel, silk (made from wooden pulp and silkworm respectively) are more sustainable than man-made fabrics like polyester and nylon (which are petroleum-based and take hundreds of years to biodegrade). However, there’s a catch! Cotton, which is a natural fibre, is biodegradable at the end of its life cycle, but it is also one of the most demanding crops in the world/country. The cotton industry uses 22.5% of the world’s insecticide. Cotton crops also require a vast amount of water to grow (nearly 257 gallons for a T-shirt), which in turn places a substantial strain on the environment. Though there is a big organic market for cotton, that doesn’t solve the water issue. Organic cotton also comes at premium prices which makes it unaffordable to many, thus making its reach limited.

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Hailing from Delhi, the intelligent and well-spoken Ishan Kapur, a student of Wellington College, England, has received US$800 grant from Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programmes (Bow Seat), an international non-profit organization whose mission is to engage youth in ocean conservation and creative advocacy. Ishan was selected as a Fellowship grantee from nearly 70 applicants worldwide. The grant and ongoing mentorship will help support Ishan’s project, Mats that Matter by The Blue Voice, which aims to reduce plastic pollution in local waterways as well as among the marginalized populations in the city.

Ishan has also been recognised with the highest accolade a young person can achieve for social action or humanitarian efforts —The Diana Award 2021.

Ishan Kapur has his own country very much on his mind — regarding marine conservation and supporting the less fortunate. All the credit goes to his parents as Ishan admits that he follows what he has been taught at home from his childhood and is inspired by this.

The 16-year-old student explains to VIRGINIA VACHA how he got this special grant at such a young age.

In which school in England are you currently studying and what subjects are you taking up?
I am studying in grade 11 at Wellington College, Crowthorne, Berkshire, U.K. and aspire to study subjects like economics, international relations, and policy-making in college in the future.

When did the idea of turning plastic waste into mats occur to you?
Growing up in an environmentally-conscious household, I was always taught to reuse, reduce and recycle. When I learned about the ‘Matting Change Project’ started by a teenager in the U.S., I was inspired to apply the same ideals to meet the needs of our own country. So I started an initiative to crochet sleeping mats for the homeless using single-use plastic bags.

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